LOTR Elven traslation

[Mr Nighttime]

Does anyone know if there is a website that will translate sentences from English to Elven?

Also does anyone know what the Elven translation of "Not all those who wander are lost"? is?

Working on a project and I admit my ability to find such things is lacking. Thanks.

 

[Neroon]

I wish I could help you, but the online resources I had have since vanished into the West. One of the few left is this:
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/angora5/Translator.html

It's not that great, but it might help.

 

[Mr Nighttime]

I would love to read your post Neroon...but your avatar pic has scared me to the point of blindness.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Back in the 80's, I compiled 3 Elvish dictionaries from all the available books at the time.
Quenya, Noldorish and Sindarin. I've still got them saved somewhere, but they are only word translations.

 

[Deckerd]

Back in the 80's, I compiled 3 Elvish dictionaries from all the available books at the time.
Quenya, Noldorish and Sindarin. I've still got them saved somewhere, but they are only word translations.

See it takes a brave kind of person to actually admit to that.

I always imagined Prof Tolkein based it on Celtic languages, I think, probably 'p' Celtic. Being a student of ancient languages he could take his pick. A lot of the English he uses later on in the books uses idiom and phrasing as though it's translated from Old English.

 

[Mistral]

http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/angora5/Translator.html

http://www.coveworld.net/eberron/aerenal_translator.html

http://www.geocities.com/hobbits_live5/learnelvish.html

Hope these help. It's what I'm here for.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Back in the 80's, I compiled 3 Elvish dictionaries from all the available books at the time.
Quenya, Noldorish and Sindarin. I've still got them saved somewhere, but they are only word translations.

"Noldorish"? What is that?

 

[Delta1]

You can get David Salo's Sindarin grammar, used, on Amazon. I don't know if there are any recent dictionaries, but you could probably compile them from the gnomish word lists in the Histories of Middle-earth and the more canonical wordlists in the Silmarillion. 'd get those, make a translation, and check it against canonical Sindarin to make sure the syntax is authentic looking.

I wouldn't trust any machine translation, they haven't moved far beyond biting the wax tadpole. The one at Angelfire is missing a number of words attested in LotR.

http://www.coveworld.net/eberron/aerenal_translator.html isn't about Tolkien's elves, it's about some other fictional universe entirely. The "language" produced by the translator isn't even close to an Eldarin language.

Good site on Elvish languages: http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/

 

[Mr Nighttime]

Well, it is actually for a project i am doing for a friend of mine who is heavy into LOTR. I am making her a walking stick that does resemble Gandalf's and wanted to inscribe something in Elven for her on it to make it more personal.

"Not all who wander are lost" was the first thing to come to mind and I want it to be fairly accurate.

 

[Delta1]

Okey-dokey. Gandalf spoke Valarin and Quenya in the West, so let's say he used Quenya to engrave his staff in Middle-earth. I can't vouch for its accuracy, but http://www.geocities.com/aikanaro42/dictionary.html gives the following defintions:

not = lá
all = ilya
wanderers = ranyari (NB, ranya- + agent suffix -r- + plural sign -i)
are = nar
lost = vanwar (NB, plural substantive adjectives add -r, maybe keep the -r, maybe don't)

It seems you can use subject-verb-object or subject-object-verb order with nar, so that gives us a couple options for the verb.

Lá ilya ranyari nar vanwar.
Lá ilya ranyari vanwar nar.

I used Ardalambion for the grammar; any misapplication of that grammar is almost definitely my fault. Ranyari is literally wanderers, but I think it's a good enough translation for "[those] who wander." Do you need that transliterated into Tengwar and/or Cirth, too?

 

[Mr Nighttime]

I thank you very much!

 

[Delta1]

Sindarin makes my head hurt, but here's my attempt:

Idh randirath, u-bân [nar] pen mîn.

The wanderers, not all [are] without ways.

Sindarin sentences are normally formed without the copula and it's not well-attested, but David Salo derived the copula na- for the LotR movies. That's why I put nar in brackets--it's not really correct, but since we are translating poetry we can allow a little incorrectness to slip in. Personally, I'd leave it out.

Idh, is the plural article, although it might be in, it seems that's not entirely nailed down. Randirath is a class plural, meaning something like "all wanderers" or "wanderers in general." If you want a regular plural, it would be randir. U-bân is the negated and lentitioned pân, "all." Pen means "without, lacking," and mîn is "ways."

Both are just back-of-the-envelope I-don't-know-the-language-but-here's-a-grammar-and-dictionary translations, but I'm much more confident in the Quenya version. It's a much higher class of language, too.